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Lynn Townsend White, environmental ethics, Christianity and Buddhism

Pope Francis and St Francis of Assisi are the best hopes for Environmental Christianity

I have mentioned Lynn Townsend White several times in this blog without, I am sorry to say, having read his 1966 article (see comments re Buddhism and re Christianity). It is available online and I recommend it The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis Lynn White, Jr. As a historian, he is in the same league as Lewis Mumford and Sigfried Giedion but is field of view is wider, because he is a historian of ideas with an interest in the environment, rather than the other way about. Here is the famous passage from White’s paper, in bold, with the sentences which precede dnd follow it in italics:To a Christian a tree can be no more than a physical fact. The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West. For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature.
What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. The beatniks, who are the basic revolutionaries of our t ime, show a sound instinct in their affinity for Zen Buddhism, which conceives of the man-nature relationship as very nearly the mirror image of the Christian view. Zen, however, is as deeply conditioned by Asian history as Christianity is by the experience of the West, and I am dubious of its viability among us.Possibly we should ponder the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi. The prime miracle of Saint Francis is the fact that he did not end at the stake, as many of his left-wing followers did. He was so clearly heretical that a General of the Franciscan Order, Saint Bonavlentura, a great and perceptive Christian, tried to suppress the early accounts of Franciscanism. The key to an understanding of Francis is his belief in the virtue of humility–not merely for the individual but for man as a species. Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures.

With this in mind, it is heartening that the new Pope has taken the name Francis. Pope Francis and St Francis of Assisi are the best hopes for Environmental Christianity – and possibly for the world environment. If Lynn White is correct that Christian beliefs underlie the attitude to the environment of Post-Christians and Non-Christians around the world, then a re-orientation of Christianity around St Francis could contribute much to ‘saving the planet’. Let’s hope this will include a new attitude to birth control. If the catholic church does not want to use modern technology for this purpose then, as in old Tibet, it could be done by having a very large population of non-breeding monks and nuns. Like St Francis, they could love animals. White went on to write thatBoth our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crisis can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and refeel our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical, sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature
may point a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint for ecologists.

It is possible that some Christians have a consumptive attitude towards nature because they are expecting ‘a new heaven’ and ‘a new earth’ at the end of time: and thus are laissez faire towards the one which we have here and now.

It is possible that the question of birth control goes something like this:
Do you believe in sex before marriage? Do you believe in loving all children as they are conceived?

Given that a woman is fertile only for 48hrs a month
( http://www.storknet.com/cubbies/preconception/exbp26.htm ) and it is possible to detect the fertile period with home based technology that assists with fertility if you want to get pregnant, birth control shouldn’t really be an issue.

So it seems better sex education and biology lessons are needed rather than birth control pills which put harmful chemicals into our bodies or snips for men which might have other complications.

I do not know if ‘hagiography’ always had its connotation of ‘blind adulation’ but the practice was surely there from the start and the treatment of St Francis was normal.
Comparably, the ‘blind adulation’ for marriage and child-bearing has surely been overdone. Instead, schools should be explaining that ‘some of you will want to have children and some of you won’t and both life choices are good’. In ancient Tibet, this worked by encouraging a third of the population to become monks and nuns. People could ONLY marry if they had the necessary land to grow the necessary food. Monks and nuns appear to have been at least as happy as anyone else. Though I can see the difficulties, I think modern societies should find ways of finding equivalents of monasticism. As you say, there are undesirable aspects to birth control technology.

Perhaps by requiring that only people with land could get married in Tibet there was a realisation of beyond the romance of falling in love there was the pragmatic aspect of the economy of providing what was needed for the couple and the family to live (food, shelter and clothes).

This is probably why most marriages today are still arranged marriages [ http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=6762309&page=1 ]. It is along time since Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet (believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595), yet the challenge of finding true love once you have the social freedom to do so seems to take some figuring out.

Tom, you obviously have a headstart with the pragmatic side all your gardening expertise!

It is understandable that there should have been a concentration on their goodness when remembering the lives of good people. But the modern fashion of assuming that everyone has warts as well as virtues is also understandable. I watched an excellent TV programme on Isaac Newton yesterday. It gave a dramatic account of his scientific importance and took my breath away, again, with the Law of Universal Gravitation and his Colour Theory. But, it seemed, gave almost as much time to his self-centred vanity, reclusiveness and possible homosexuality. SURELY the two sides of his personality are not of equal importance. There is no other scientist whose work seems, to me, of equal importance.
Re marriage, I read interviews with Richard Dworkin and his third wife recently. He said that apart from her being gorgeous what he really loved about her was the way he appreciated his work. Fancy that! It is amazing that 60% of marriages are arranged but admit that I can sort-of understand why it works.
Re my gardening ‘expertise’ – most of what I once knew has now gone!

It seems many foundational scientists who are considered geniuses also worked in areas of thought which today would not be considered orthodox positions, but which history may re-evaluate again in time. When you are speaking of the two sides to Newton’s personality are you talking about his public or professional life and private or domestic life? Or something different?

Do you know if Richard Dworkin’s has found a cure for religion yet?

I am sure that your gardening expertise has only grown more extensive over time.

Dawkins attributes bad things to religions and therefore opposes them. Doubtless he could could also attribute bad things to families, tribes, nations, professions and other human groups. So would he oppose them all? My guess is that he would find them to have good attributes. This is what he has discovered about marriage.I think he is rather ignorant about the history of ideas. Newton was as far ahead of Dawkins in this area as in his scientific talent. Newton had difficulties in his personal life, possibly because he was homosexual in an age which opposed homosexuality. I would rather read St Augustine and Newton than Dawkins, every day of the week. Dawkins could be a closet Marxist.

Having listened to Dawkins speak my guess is he would really like to have an intelligent conversation about religion but no-one is prepared to have it with him. In conversations he has with clerics the clerics are usually seem so scandalised by his statements on religion and perhaps a little intimidated by his science to really do this.

In one conversation (if my memory of it is correct) he recounted an antedote from boyhood about someone speaking of a punishing, rather hostile God. I am not sure if anyone has ever corrected this erronous impression and told him about an amazing loving God.

Perhaps he also made the comment about religion needing a cure, as if it were a disease, to be provocative?

Yes: having ‘lost’ their faith many people come to regret it. And yes, most Christian leaders are woefully stuck in the past. I think one of the reasons for the spreading influence of Buddhism in ‘the west’ is that it is something of an ‘open source’ faith. The Buddha invited his followers to think for themselves and to be critical of his statements. This is more in sympathy with our time than dogmatic fundamentalism – and it is a direct consequence of the theory of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda). If everything is connected to everything then one can’t be certain about anything without knowing about everything in every universe, which would be difficult!

Buddha learnt his religion from direct experience and so he was confident that if his students followed his path they too would have similar experiences. Thus, he wasn’t asking them to believe on his authority what he was teaching.

From my own experience teaching at university it can be quite confronting to have your authority questioned and you need to be very confident to give students experiences and guidance that enables them to discover ideas for themselves.

I am not so sure why there is a difficulty with this in Christian religion, apart from the fact that there has been a long history of a distinction being made between religious and non-religious people, and much like males (in public life) and females (in domestic life), with them occupying and concerning themselves with different spheres of life (ie the religious life and the secular life).

Finding a way to uniting public and private life and the genders and religious and secular life and the states of life is probably part of the challenge of our times.

I agree about the attractions of debate in a class and much prefer this to lecturing, both for my sake and the students’ sake. In fact if I was starting out as a lecturer my aim would be to deliver the presentation material as a video, combining word and image, and then to use the class time for discussion.
I had a friend who gave up landscape architecture for a religious life and explained to me that what he wanted was ‘certainty’. This is a quality offered by the Abrahamic faiths but not by Buddhism. The Buddha asked his listeners to question his ideas and explained to them that impermanence (annica) is a fundamental characteristic of the universe.
At the start of the twentieth century several books were published suggesting that Buddhism had been an influence on Christianity. The idea has mostly been dropped, for lack of evidence, but people still reflect on the parallels between the two belief systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Buddhism_and_Christianity I still wonder if new evidence will come to light. You never know what archaeologists are going to find!
Another thought is that it might be a good thing for Buddhism if it stopped being called ‘Buddhism’. It is true that ‘Western philosophy is little more than a series of footnotes to Plato’ but (1) we call it ‘philosophy’, not ‘Platonism’ (2) Plato’s use of discourse as a literary form makes it clear that he was not making a claim to personal greatness or infallibility or even originality – any more than the Buddha was.

Papal infallibility is usually misunderstood to mean that every time the Pope opens his mouth what he says is an infallible truth!

Rather: As Vatican II remarked, it is a charism the pope “enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (Luke 22:32), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals.

Personal greatness is a question for history. Plato (429–347), obviously passes this test with flying colours as does Buddha (563 BCE to 483 BCE)!

I am not 100 percent sure about this – but my understanding of what Pope John Paul the II said was that the Church did not have authority to ordain women – that it was a question that would only be solved by Revelation. Revelation is when popular sentiment, the Pope and theologians and some sign from Heaven (ie via saints) concur on a question.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation ]

We need Lynn White to advise on this – but he would have to do it from beyond the grave. My view is that Buddhism is in a better position. The sacred texts seem to me more complicated than Christian texts but everything is covered by the theory of annica (impermanence) which has the consequence that ideas, theories, everything can keep changing. It may be that the principle of revelation also allows change, but it does not seem to happen very often and the Abrahamic religions seem to have had longer and bitterer disputes than Buddhism.

Or rather we, in the West, have not been involved in the Buddhist disputes!

It would seem that at least in Buddhism there is a concrete attempt to give real guidance on how to live. I am not sure that this really happens in Christianity (beyond the 10 commandments) and we are pretty much left to muddle through with mistakes being encouraged!

But perhaps I am being too hard on Christianity as most Buddhist country’s including Burma have their own struggles, so we Christians do seem to be doing pretty well all things considered.

Buddhists have certainly been involved in in fighting each other, as revealed by the ‘monastery-fortresses’ throughout the Buddhist regions of the Himalayas. But I do not think they were fighting about Buddhism: the disputes were about land, power etc. The Dalai Lama is a case in point. He is widely, and rightly, seen as a symbol of world peace in the modern world. But his ancestors owned their supremacy over other spiritual leaders to a deal with China’s rulers. It was a deal about power, not about docrinal matters.

I am not all that sure about the evolution of the different schools of Buddhism ie. the two main schools being commonly cited as Theravada and the Mahayana (Vajrayana of which Tibetan Buddhism is a part – and Geluk of whch the Dalai Lama is an exponent.)

Understanding all the variants of Buddhism seems as complicated as understanding all the different churches and orders within Christianity (and their respective origins and developments)! So, I am not really very sure if there were disputes and if there were, what these disputes might have been about.

However, it is helpful that Buddhism is traced back to Buddha who was born in Nepal. Nepal until very recently was a Hindu Kingdom, but is now a secular state.

Yes, the Dalai Lama, along with Aung San Suu Kyi, demonstrate in very practical ways how remarkable Buddhism as a religion truly is. Buddhism in Burma originates in the Theravada school.

One of the many very great things about the Buddha is that he told his followers to question all his beliefs. They have done this to the upmost degree and I think there are many more Buddhist sects than there are Christian sects. I think it better to describe Buddhism as a set of inter-related beliefs than to describe it as a religion. The word ‘religion’ is western and has too many connotations of ‘do what I say’ and ‘think what I think’. There is no equivalent for the European word ‘religion’ in Sanskrit or Prakit and many ‘Buddhists’ to not like the term ‘Buddhist’, because it seems to have been coined on the same pattern as ‘Christians’. They prefer to associate their beliefs with the word Dharma and to explain Dharma as ‘universal truth’ or ‘the laws which rule Nature’, so that it must change as our understandings change. Sadly, to have a good understanding of Dharma one must have something I do not have: a knowledge of Sanskrit. Regardless of caution, I will however be publishing a set of videos shortly: on the relationships between ‘Buddhism’, gardens and environmental ethics. I expect them to be more riddled with errors, of fact and interpretation, than a Gruyère cheese as big as the Milky Way. I will explain this with my ‘ancestors’ karma [‘ancestors’ in quotes because they may not be genetic relatives – in fact they may be pigs or worms].

Yes it is often very hard to understand something ‘other’ than you are used to without acquiring a whole new language. It is probably like learning another language…you known you are making some headway when you start dreaming in the other language and stop interpreting it into your language in order to make it comprehensible!

And not just one new language. I read that anyone learning Babylonian will soon find themselves learning German – because German scholars have led the way in Babylonian scholarship. Similarly, if you learn Sanskrit to study Buddhism you will soon find yourself learning Pali and Hindi.
Re a Buddhist editor, it would be good but one of the attractive things about web publishing is that there is a whole world of readers to point out mistakes and one can easily make corrections. This is not an excuse for carelessness but it is better than having one’s mistakes set in print – as when I published the mistaken fact that Chandigarh is in Pakistan! Btw, the Chandigarh Tourism website describes it as ‘ the best-planned city in India’.

I am also thinking of language in the sense of a professional language or a discipline langugage where words introduce entirely new concepts (ie reincarnation).

It is interesting how in professional disciplines the same word can have different technical meanings, this makes cross-disciplinary dialogue endlessly fascinating, but at the same time fraught with the problem of misunderstanding and inexactitude.

Some of the best consultation comments in planning can come from cross-disciplinary interactions, where your awareness and detailed perception of issues under consideration can be increased by the critical dialogue! In this sense the best mistakes (or even errors of omission)are amazing learning experiences, and yes it is possible in this context to if consultation is done in a timely way, to easily make corrections.

Yes. The great strength of ‘urban design’ is that it is a forum for bringing the professional disciplines together and NOT a professionalised discipline in its own right. I am greatly opposed to any one discipline claiming a right to colonise urban design, though I do think it is a field of work to which landscape are particularly well suited! My reason is that their core skill is in the design of outdoor space. This skill relates to the design of indoor space but the compositional elements are landform, water, vegetation, horizontal structures (eg roads and paths) and vertical structures (roofed and unroofed) instead of walls, floors, ceilings, windows and doors. In fact what do you think about deconstructing the architecture profession and replacing it with teams of interior designers, structural engineers and landscape architects? Just a thought!

As an interior designer who has worked with structural engineers and landscape architects in a professional context, if the deconstructing of the architectural profession were to occur, there would be a gap left in the way of thinking that the overlap between interior designer, structural engineer and landscape architect, wouldn’t cover.

Think of it this way: The design of architecture nearly always starts with the land, but sometimes with the air and a functional requirement/s. The design of interiors nearly always start with an interior volume and a functional requirement/s. The design of the structure nearly always starts with an architectural concept and a set of external and internal phyiscal conditions (physics) which relate to that concept.

These are the points of genesis.

The urban setting brings many of these elements into play and also more. Urban design occurs mostly, but not always at a larger scale than was traditional for the interior design, structural engineer and landscape architect. It nearly always starts with a larger urban setting, an idea about the relationship between things within this setting and a range of functional requirements.

And yes, beyond this there are a set of compositional skills that are brought to the project by the various professions.

In the scalar sense and the relational sense, there may be some sense in there being a discipline of urban design…but one which requires the contribution of a range of professions and professional skills and disciplinary knowledges at a secondary or meta level. No knowledge is unimportant.

I was only being mischievous! If asked to plan a programme of studies in architecture I would probably come up with something not too different from the RIBA, AIA etc. But to re-make a point I have made before, I think there is a great need for diversity in the education of architectural designers. Having never tried it, I am doubtful about there being more than one way to skin a cat. But when I remember Joseph Paxton, Pier Luigi Nervi, Tadeo Ando and Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture Without Architects, I am convinced of there being more than one way to design a building. And with garden design it is probable that most of the world’s great gardens were designed by people with no training in garden design: kings, priests, artists, architects, plantsmen etc. Like every other coin, professionalisation has two sides: good and bad. Politics is increasingly professionalised, in the sense of being a career in its own right, and many people blame this for the shortsightedness and stupidity of the current generation of politicians.
But how could the grip of professionals on the professions be loosened without taking risks?

I am not sure that de-professionalisation is a good idea. However, it is certainly a good idea to have other pathways into the professions other than the traditional ways, but also a way for ensuring that the basic threshold standards are met.

Undoubtably, Joseph Paxton, Pier Luigi Nervi, Tadeo Ando etc would all have the requisite skill set to enable this to occur. A question is how do you test for these things short of through the usual course of study?

I think the answer to non-traditional entry routes is to have examinations for which a set diet of studies is not a necessary condition for entry. Applicants could be asked to submit ‘other evidence’ in lieu of academic qualifications. This could, for example, be projects they have designed and built. The examiners would have to be diligent and they could prescribe certain additional studies (eg in law and professional practice) to supplement the evidence supplied. Would this work for architecture?
I was a full professional member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) for a short time and they accepted me as a member on the basis of my former education, the professional work I had done and the recommendation of those I had worked with.

It would seem possible in theory. Perhaps by considering their skills in the four core practice areas design, construction, project management and professional practice this could be achieved.

Usually, prior to registration as an architect it is necessary to do two years supervised practical experience in an office also – one year half way through your studies – and the other after having completed your studies. So it would seem sensible to require perhaps two years experience under the supervision of a registered architect after having passed initial examinations, and then to be examined for registration exams in the usual way.

It would be worthwhile trialing this arrangement to see whether it is satisfactory.

There is no harm in requiring two years of supervision by a registered architect in order to join a voluntary professional institute. But I think it would be too much to require this before a building can be signed off and approved for construction. A stamp of architect’s approval is not required in the UK but is necessary in France, Spain and other European countries – which would have prevented construction of a Crystal Palace designed by a Joseph Paxton – who was ‘only’ a gardener with no academic or other qualifications. Rachel Armstrong http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_armstrong_architecture_that_repairs_itself.html could possibly be another Paxton and it would be a pity to stop her designing a building because she lacked a certain education.

I am not sure that Rachel Armstrong’s ambition is to be an architect? She seems to be interested in the science of materials with ideas for their application within architecture and engineering (ie. the field of construction). [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science ].

“…Armstrong hopes to create sustainable, metabolic materials. Although this technology will take years to create and perfect, hopefully these materials will be used to save dying cities.

Venice, Italy is built upon wooden piles that have eroded over many years. As the beautiful city continues to sink, Armstrong hopes that the protocell technology will be able to reclaim the city by growing a limestone reef around the piles. These cells would be used for reinforcement purposes instead of just creating a reef in the canals.

Not only does this technology seem plausible, it would be a great innovation for architecture. Now more than ever we stress the idea of being as eco-friendly and “green” as possible; what better way to connect with nature than with this technology? It is our duty to try to salvage historical cities, and metabolic materials may very well be the answer to our problems. Furthermore, as our world becomes more technologically and scientifically advanced, it should seem reasonable to update some of our older practices as well.”

Paxton seems to have been more interested in spacial design and its application to greenhouses, which inspired and transformed the discipline of architecture.

Rachel works in the School of Architecture, Design and Construction at Greenwich and would definitely like to see ideas used in building design. The reason for my comparison with Paxton is that he began with a design detail (for ridge-and-furrow glazing) and ‘grew’ this detail into the design for the Crystal Palace. If the technology worked out, I think Rachel could do the same thing with bio-materials – except that it would be a nuisance for her to become a registered architect in the UK. But if the technology is going to transform the discipline of architecture then I think she ought to be welcomed with open arms.

Why would it be a nuisance for Rachel to become a registered architect in the UK? Would it be an issue for Rachel or for the architectural profession? There are most probably qualified architects (and engineers) working in similar ways as Rachel on materials science, but they may not be registered and are more likely to be research-based academics based in universities.

Has she spoken to Future Systems about her ideas? They are the most likely practice-based architects to be interested in promoting, advancing and commercialising the potential of bio-materials in a design context. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Systems ].

If she is interested in also practising as an architect, their firm may be the most appropriate pathway.

Rachel has many architects to work with. Perhaps distraction would be a better word than nuisance. What I mean is that the time spent on an architectural curriculum would not help with her research. It reminds me of James Watt. When he was working on the steam engine he wanted to join a guild of craftsmen. It was agreed that he had all the necessary craft skills but they would not have him because he had not served time as an apprentice. I think this attitude doomed the guild system. They became closed shops instead of centres of innovation and excellence – though of course they always had been cartels to a significant degree. I keep hoping that landscape architects will avoid the problem because so many of the entrants are post-graduate and bring in skills from other professions.

I think the research is still in the blue-sky category but bio-engineering is fast-developing field. Most of the work is medical for the present but there is no reason why this should remain so. It only needs one commercially successful innovation to open a vast new field of activity in construction design.
The distinction between patents and copyrights is interesting. I guess Paxton would have, had he lived under our laws, both a patent on the glazing system and copyright in the design.

I am thinking of the difference as located the in field of intellectual property – Rachel would eventually be applying to patent her work – while most designers in practice would be seeking copyright and moral rights for their work.

You are right that the field of activity is construction design rather than ‘design’ in the generalist sense of architectural design, landscape design and urban design etc.

In terms of advancing architectural design, and it does, this sort of innovation in construction design enhances the designers vocabulary – ie it is like learning to use a stick to do dots on a canvas (as indigenous artists do) rather than using a brushwork and brushwork to paint.